The few days after the WBS tourney, fishing is improving as the moon fades. On Sunday we had a customer practicing for the next series of tourneys, he was 2 for 3 with the sailfish and 2 for 2 with mahi but yesterday his hook up ratio dropped a bit, missing 4 marlin bites in the morning,. Through the day we raised a dozen sails and caught 4 plus a late afternoon blue marlin.

posted
by Capt. George Beckwith at 9:41 AM

Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Finals

Dwight did a great job capitalizing on the bites that he got today.....but the bite that he didn't take cost him in the end. The five anglers fishing the World Billfish Series Championship's final day had a tough day of fishing. Dwight Wolf on the Dragin Fly started the day with the first billfish release of the day with a sail, several minutes later, missing another one. At 11 am, no one else had reported a fish when James runs over a patch of hungry sailfish. Dwight hooked the first, then a second sail with another hot fish coming in on the last teaser in the water. With no other boats reporting fish, Dwight took a conservative approach, opting to land the two hooked fish instead of going for a triple header. After all, no one else had reported a release and we seemed to be raising them. Who knows what would have happened. A angler hooked up with multiple fish can only fight one fish at a time and must pick up the rod in order to take up slack. It's not easy to control 2 jumping sailifsh, let alone 3 at one time.After landing both sails, we put the spread back out and watched as the other boats chipped at Dwight's lead through the day. Although he had a couple more opportunities, Dwight's thoughts shifted back towards that hungry sailfish that wasn't presented a bait.It took 400 points to win the tournament on time with a marlin release, 2nd place also with a marlin, Dwight's 3 sails in 3rd place......the third part of his triple header would have put him in first on time.The obvious footnote here is IF. IF any of the other boats had hooked a marlin, they would have won. IF we had not gotten our last minute double header of marlin last weekend, we would not have won. That's part of what makes this "sport" so exciting.

posted
by Capt. George Beckwith at 11:04 PM

Friday, December 9, 2011

Back to Back

Congrats to Dwight Wolf, the angler sharing the Dragin Fly with me for the first two qualifying days for the WBS Grand Championship on Saturday. Dwight started the day with a striped marlin, followed by a 300 pound blue marlin, finishing his grand slam with a hot sailfish. Dwight and I rotated sides of the boat on the hour, but my side just didn't get the bites. I'm very proud of the team that we have put together on the Dragin Fly, winning the Marlin Tourny last weekend and having top angler this weekend is pretty special. Hope that Dwight gets the ring tomorrow.

Will keep you posted.

posted
by Capt. George Beckwith at 9:22 PM

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Gotta see 'em to catch 'em

Actually, the only billfish that was seen on the Dragin Fly today was a baby sailfish that decided to bite the left long while I was taking a leak. I do have the record for the 42' dash, managed to hook the fish and am comfortably sitting in 4th place.....tied with 10 other guys with 1 sailfish, followed by two guys in 3rd with 2 sails, 2nd place with 3 sails and the leader with 400 point marlin and one 100 point sail.Tomorrow is the big day, overall top 5 move on to fish on Saturday.

posted
by Capt. George Beckwith at 9:33 PM

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Never, Never, Never Give Up

In the morning we saw 2 marlin, missed them both….one of them all 3 of us had a chance…… caught a sail, jumped off 3 sails after seemingly good hook ups. 10 minutes to go in the tourney and a stripey comes off the dredge and onto the right short bait, I hook the fish and we start getting stuff in. Another stripey piles on the right teaser as it races to the boat. The fish follows the teaser all the way to the boat and starts swatting at it as it’s hanging from the outrigger. The guys are throwing baits at it, but the marlin fades off. Back down on the one we got, which is the one we need to win the tournament. Straight up and down, not too much pressure and the she comes unglued……broke the hook.

Nobody says a word and we got to work, 7 minutes to go, Scott starts dropping back the right long and bam, he gets the bite from the other stripey that faded off earlier. We catch that one. Won the tournament with a whopping 5 minutes to spare

In reality, our hook up ratio sucked. We caught 6 out of the 18 different marlin that we got bites from, saw several more. We had bites from 10 different marlin on day 1 and caught only 3. A little better with the sails, catching 6 of 10 bites.George

posted
by Capt. George Beckwith at 3:03 AM

Friday, December 2, 2011

holding On

Still in 1st place with a couple of marlin releases and a sailfish today, total of 5500 points. Voice of the Wild is in 2nd with 5200. The third place boats have 3700 points, but they're making me nervous.

posted
by Capt. George Beckwith at 7:55 PM

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Grand Slam

Caught 2 big blue marlin, a stripey and 4 sails today.....plus 2 birds and 4 dolphin......hope that we can keep it up for the next couple of days, we're sitting in first place after day 1